Forbes Names Microsoft's Steve Ballmer Worst CEO 444
New submitter _0x783czar writes "Microsoft haters gleefully have latched on to the latest scoop that a Forbes columnist has named Steve Ballmer the worst CEO. It seems that the article has leveled some strong accusations of irresponsible and ineffective business practices; claiming that Microsoft has not progressed over the last 12 years of Ballmer's leadership. (Full disclosure: I'm not a Microsoft fan myself and tend to agree with this piece.)"
Re:Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, why are we ignoring the many companies that have failed either because they failed to adapt or underwent gross negligence. I have a feeling that the CEOs of the major banks in the US have actively harmed every human on Earth. Ballmer has merely failed to maintain a near-monopoly status in a highly transient industry.
Bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today. Not only has he singlehandedly steered Microsoft out of some of the fastest growing and most lucrative tech markets (mobile music, handsets and tablets) but in the process he has sacrificed the growth and profits of not only his company but âoeecosystemâ companies such as Dell, Hewlett Packard and even Nokia. The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value â" and jobs.
And that is bad how? What I mean by that is that I sympathize with Microsoft share holders but I also regularly thank a long list of deities that Microsoft does not dominate the mobile music, handset, and tablet markets as well as desktop computing.
Re:Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they are looking at what Microsoft is capable of vs their leader. RIM at times sounds like a complete implosion. Microsoft produces outbursts of good ideas inspite of their leadership implying some good thinkers/workers are left.
Who's Going to Remove Him? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always felt that they've wasted a lot of money trying to expand into new lines of businesses. Money that would have been well spent either giving it back to stockholders as dividends. But even new lines of business that are doing well (not considering the massive investment in them so the ROI may still stink) like Bing and XBox would probably benefit the stockholders as a spinoff.
If it was up to me, I would break the company apart into 3 or 4 companies and allow the non-Windows companies to develop for all sorts of platforms. But what do I know?
That said, who's going to remove him? Bill Gates? Does Paul Allen still hold a significant stake in the company? Who owns what share of the voting stock? And who makes up the board?
I don't see Ballmer leaving anytime soon unless the investors start getting upset. And if 30% of the company (and I'm pulling that number out of thin air) is held by Gates and Ballmer, that doesn't seem likely.
More! (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I hope Ballmer has a very long tenure at Microsoft and that the past twelve years or so are only the beginning of his impact on that company.
Ineffective (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a Microsoft fan and I agree with this piece. I dont really know what he adds as CEO as I hate to listen to him speak. I'm embarrassed for him when I watch him give speeches.
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Insightful)
I largely agree, but honestly Win 7 is the best OS that MS has ever produced. Unfortunately, it happens to be solidly mediocre and has it's own set of issues, but hey, that's what you get when you have to maintain such a large userbase and keep them happy enough not to jump ship.
Where's Elop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK... and? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, he was the first business manager for the company. I guess Forbes is saying that he didn't learn much about the business in his 32 years there. Funny enough, this isn't a bunch of Linux/Apply fanbois throwing this out there... It's Forbes.
I do take issue them using the share value being used as his barometer. Yes, MS was $60 a share in 2000. Every share of anything that was remotely tech related was horrendously overinflated in 2000. The fact that the share is still worth $30 is impressive despite the other detriments listed in this article. It's a nitpick, and otherwise, I think the article is fair.
Last 12 years were tough (Score:5, Insightful)
Dot-com flameout, 9/11, housing and banking collapse in the US, combined with market saturation in the PC space and getting trounced by Apple on the high end ... I'm not sure what he could have done. Contrast Gates, who rode the Windows95 wave to fame and bailed at the right time. Maybe Ballmer's winning move was not to play.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess that actually makes quite a bit of sense. But even given that many of the banks would have imploded if not for the bail out, GM would be gone if not for the bail out and plenty of marginally successful companies have gone through quite a bit of economic turmoil that MS has avoided, IBM, for example, is laying of a ton of people and has been for some time now.
Even in money-making-game, I think coming up red or having to be bailed out is worse than not being black enough.
blah blah profit blah share price blah (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Worse? (Score:2, Insightful)
I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
10 years ago Windows was cesspool of malware on unmanaged PCs (home users) - yes there's always room to improve here, but Windows 7/8 is markedly more hardened to attack than XP RTM was, MSFT profits came from 100% Windows & Office, Windows Servers were a joke, and the XBox was laughed at like Windows Phone is by some today.
I'm happy with the direction MSFT is going; Windows Servers especially now are serious contenders in the enterprise (and bring in serious cash now), Office is moving in many directions at once (Office 365, iOS, Metro), the online services are growing too (Bing, albeit slowly, SkyDrive - making Google look out of date), and the XBox has come into its' own. Not everything's perfect of course; WP7 has the most room here, but the reviews of people using it are generally very positive and the Nokia effect has yet to be fully realised. Not to mention Windows 8 will unify 1 OS across many many device-types & form-factors (although again, to what extent this will be successful is as yet unclear - the direction is a good one IMO). There're some real assets in MSFT, despite what you might hear on slashdot.
Anyway, I know this is a unpopular opinion here and I fully expect to be patronised with snarky replies because of it, but honestly I think Ballmer has done some good things for MSFT. Not perfect, and he'll never have the cult-like status Jobs or even Gates did but people underestimate him IMO. That's just my 2cents.
Wait, What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, I'm going to have to say Forbes is off base here. There are too many other CEOs driving their companies or our economy into the ground. Even if you stipulate that they must still be employed so that you can fire them, Ballmer might be in the top 10, but I don't think he'd make the top 5 much less number 1.
Are you kidding me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look Ballmer is a douche, no doubt. But worst CEO, compared to the putzes who ran almost every bank, Chrystler, and GM into bankruptcy? Compared to Scott Thompson? Jerry Yang?
He may be a dick, but I don't see MS going bankrupt or asking for government bailouts.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind this is Forbes we're talking about. Leading the world into a massive global recession is fine if your company is able to profit from it. It's just business.
Re:Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he should have asked for a government bailout, since Forbes apparently thinks that CEO's who run their companies into bankruptcy and go running to Uncle Sam to save them are still somehow better than the CEO of a very profitable company.
Stock Price? (Score:4, Insightful)
The author criticizes Balmer for the stock not getting back to it's high of $60/share. You can dismiss this article just based on that criticism. Microsoft's stock price skyrocketed to that during the 2000 tech craze and was seriously overvalued at that point. Balmer had nothing to do with the stock price tanking at that point. Reality did.
Stock price is also an incomplete measure of a company's performance. The article fails to mention that Microsoft has steadily paid out dividends or made a special distribution of $3/share in the fall of 2004. That kind of activity isn't reflected in stock price.
I'll be fine with criticizing Microsoft for underperforming. Sure, they haven't found ways to capitalize on their monopoly power in the OS market. The sensationalistic opinions here don't mean much though.
Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
From that point of view Microsoft will always be badly run because it is quite hard to distort its share price owing to the very public visibility of its products. Google, Apple and other companies whose value is hard to work out are wonderful because traders can profit going down as well as up.
Re:Last 12 years were tough (Score:5, Insightful)
Times were tough, but somehow Google prospered, Apple prospered, etc. Read the article, it points out the under his leadership, Microsoft has avoided all current growth markets. Yes they are still profitable, but a decade of no visible vision of the future isn't a good sign. They've been basically chasing other companies this whole time.
Re:Worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a fan of M$ these days but still I agree. There are a ton of companies that have outright failed, lost a huge lead,
I don't know... I can't think of any company that has blown a lead as huge as Microsoft's in as short a time, or has missed so thoroughly a major trend (mobile computing) in the consumer portion of it's market. Actually, that's not fair. Microsoft was way ahead of the curve in spotting the trend, but virtually every version of mobile OS or app they've delivered has been so bad it was dead on arrival. With resources like Microsoft's, that's almost inconceivable, let alone inexcusable.
Re:Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
CEOs are also easy targets because they seem to get paid handsomely whether they succeed or fail. If Joe Worker screws up his job, at best he gets let go and can collect unemployment, and maybe he gets a tiny bit of severance; worst case, he's fired for cause and doesn't get a damn thing. But when Joe CEO drives a company into the ground? Not to worry, he's still gonna get his multi-million dollar golden parachute, which he'll ride right over to the next company. It's no wonder people get pissed about that disparity.
Re:Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
RIM. Hell even Nokia.
Re:It's gotten hard to hate on Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
But still, we had the "too big to fail" banks needing bailouts to preven another Great Depression, we had GM needing to be bailed out, there's Carly Fiona, there's the latest thing with that bank that just misplaced two billion dollars, there's Rupert Murdoch and the phone hacking, there's Sony (biggest loss in their history for the fourth year in a row). I'm no fan of Ballmer's; in fact I detest and ridicule him, but to call him the worst CEO is pretty much a stretch. It's not like MS is in the red year after year like Sony or RIM.
Re:Worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
$60 to $20-30 is constant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft's share price hasn't remained constant. The article points out he's lost 2/3rd of its value with MS rarely in the $30s.
It's sort of a slow motion train wreck, IMHO Metro will fail, Ballmer will present desktop licenses of Windows 8 as Metro sales and pretend its a success. It appears to me he's a saleman, and the biggest sales job he's doing, is himself to Microsoft shareholders so they don't fire him.
Re:Worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
They can't seem to beat Apple at its own game, though. I don't see that as a corporate failing, rather the inability to work with an unstable element. (Image, the perception of cool)
Re:Worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
but it probably would - people would not stop buying cars, but who'd set up a factory in a ex-GM factory when they could set one up in China or Germany?
What would happen is that existing factories would ramp up their production, not that the ex-GM factories would suddenly reopen and continue making cars as if nothing had happened. Look to the UK for an example of what happens when the car plants shut. Best you can hope for if government-supported foreign investment.
Re:Worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
Note the use of the word "today" in your quote from TFA.
The CEO of a company that outright failed last year is clearly not "CEO of a large publicly traded American company today". Yesterday, perhaps, but not today.
Looks to me like TFA is arguing that Ballmer SHOULD be fired, not that he's the worst in history.
Re:Worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can think of a company that's done a lot worse than Microsoft missing the boat on mobile. Microsoft missing the boat on the Internet. They thought they could compete by providing their own network instead. Except it wasn't Ballmer in charge back then, it was Bill Gates. Was he a terrible CEO too?
Re:Worse? (Score:3, Insightful)
produce the next product that would end up in every home - but Microsoft, under Ballmer's guidance, didn't.
BS. Ballmer took over in 2000.. the XBox was released in 2001.
No 1 console worldwide.. 49% marketshare [technet.com]
If that doesn't count, then what would?
Microsoft's stock price - while fairly high - has remained constant for ten years, while many of its competitors have seen enormous growth
Stock price is a terrible metric. For example, it will value a company that has increased its revenue from 25 billion to 73 billion, and increased its net income from 7.35 billion to 23.34 billion in 10 years exactly the same.
Now to me, 25 billion is less than 73 billion, and 7.35 billion is less than 23.34 billion... so I would think if a company did that, their share price would be higher, right?
Yet, that's exactly the position Microsoft finds itself in. Is this Microsoft's fault, or the investors who don't know basic math?
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=msft [yahoo.com]
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2001/jul01/07-19Q014ER.aspx [microsoft.com]
Re:Last 12 years were tough (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, he had it tough, but every CEO faces challenges, and there are plenty of CEOs that surmounted them during that same time. He didn't.
And the point of the CEO is to lead his company in making those "waves" so that they can ride them. If Windows 95 was Gates' wave, where's Ballmer's? The Xbox is likely the biggest new thing to come out under his leadership, but even it has only become net profitable in the last year or two, and if we imagine their company as a stool with legs holding it up, it's hardly a third leg for them to stand on, alongside their Windows and Office legs. The adoption of C# and .NET may be a bigger success for him, but good developers can pick up new languages and frameworks rather easily, so they aren't locked in and may not be there tomorrow. Where the good developers go, there the money goes.
I'm having a hard time thinking of any other successes under his leadership. Windows 7 was a recovery after Vista, to be sure, but a load of people are still back on XP. The Zune and its marketplace ended up being a colossal failure. Everything in the Internet space has ended up failing them, whether it be Live search, err...Bing, or the ever-declining market share of Internet Explorer. They lost their hold in the smartphone market. They had nearly a decade head start on the iPad in terms of trying to get into the tablet space, and they failed to make anything happen there in that time. Whatever happened to the Courier tablet that Ballmer showed off at his CES keynote a few years back. Or their Origami project, which was rather heavily virally marketed?
When you look at Ballmer's quotes on up-and-coming technology, you really don't get the impression that he's a guy who "gets" it. He's a businessman. He looks at devices and sees a checklist of features (in particular, which ones are missing), where everyday consumers see something new and different that does what they want. You can easily find quotes from him dismissing Google, iPod, iPhone, Android, and iPad. And I'll grant that some of that is just him playing the part of salesman for his company, but it makes him look the buffoon when he makes promises of how Microsoft will trounce X_DISRUPTIVE_TECHNOLOGY and then fails to deliver in the timeline he specified.
And I find that to be a real shame, because every time I see images or ideas coming out of Microsoft R&D, I'm impressed. It's clear they have some great minds in there putting together some great ideas, but it's also clear that their management has no clue how to execute on all of the great things they're being given by R&D. Every once in awhile you'll see a product coming out that looks like it may have some promise for changing things up (e.g. Surface, Photosynth, etc.), but more often than not it fails to deliver.
Hilarious and predictable (Score:4, Insightful)
Well I have some news for you guys. Microsoft is not the piece of shit company it once was. The article is spot on with its analysis of Ballmer's failure to lead MS into the forefront of relatively new markets, yes. But I cannot comprehend all of the continued and abundant dislike for this company among nerds (and even more staggering is the compulsive fawning over Apple, a company that is for all intents and purposes exactly what MS was in the hay day of their uncoolness). Just about every mainstream product MS has released in the past 3-4 years has been incredible. Namely though, Windows 7, Windows phone, and all of their developer tools are just absolutely top notch pieces of software.
If you're a real nerd and you're really paying attention and you're really using your brain and you're really thinking for yourself, you might see that they deserve a lot more credit than what they are getting here. Of course I can't speak for Ballmer. I don't think his leadership necessarily has any bearing on the quality of the company's work within their existing markets.
Disclaimer: Not an MS shill, just a modern-day sympathizer.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) The main problem was people were NOT buying cars. Because few people can afford to buy a new car cash, the auto industry is highly reliant on loans. Those loans were basically unavailable. I could see it directly in my area: the day that they postponed the initial bailout of the banks, three major auto dealers closed shop. Over the course of that year, the major auto shopping areas lost about 1/3 of their dealers, most of which still have not returned.
2) Bankruptcy still requires operating capital to allow a company to work. That was done also mostly via overnight loans. Those loans were also drying up fast.
3) Reorganization implies reorganization of loans. No bank was willing to do that if there was not some sort of guarantee that GM was going to make it, and be able to repay whatever was left. Otherwise, they were willing to test their luck in liquidation.
4) The biggest headache wasn't GM - it was the supplier networks. With JIT fabrication and supply lines, there is no slack in the supply line, and it is very difficult to suddenly go serve a completely different car maker. If GM had stopped making cars, the entire GM supply line would have been handed a death sentence. Yes, bankruptcy there was more feasible, but still - you don't retool your entire distribution network from one week to the next, or even over the course of a month.
5) Finally, even if we assume that other carmakers would at some point pick up the slack, that would not be instantaneous. At the very least, it would take a few months to ramp up and hire the GM workers (and that's assuming completely unrealistically ideal situations). In the meantime, you'd have a ton of GM workers not contributing to the economy at large, dealer networks not contributing to the economy, and supplier networks not contributing. In other words, just when you'd need demand to stay stable, it would drop even more.
Common sense is vastly overrated. If you don't have data, your common sense is just a guess supported by prejudice.
Re:Worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Xbox division is indeed doing great, but Ballmer seems to undermine it every time he can. There were some big losses last year due to some acquisitions (Skype? not sure...) and they "balanced the books" by punishing a lot of divisions, the Xbox division I understand was hit hard and would had shined had they not done that.
It's like Ballmer is ashamed of anything that does not have a big Windows brand in the box, when perhaps he should be doing the opposite.
Can you imagine how well Apple would had fared had they called their iPhone a MacPhone instead? I bet it would have been a flop just due to the horrible unmarketable name.
It’s time Microsoft realizes their future is in the Metro/Xbox brands, not in the Windows/Office ones. Ballmer's resistance is slowly going to kill Microsoft.
Re:Worse? (Score:0, Insightful)
kinda?
If Toyota, Honda and ford want to move into the new market that the giant hole of the other auto companies closing has left in time to exploit that hole then they will need production facilities, fast. There happen to be production facilities in Detroit right now, and they are owned by rather motivated creditors who will let them go for less then 50% of there value to reclaim as much value as they can. End result is that those factories don't stay closed for long, and then they'll need employees- which shockingly there are a lot of people available with a lot of experience in the field who can work those exact plants.
The suppliers may increase there margins, or they may decrease them- this part all comes down to how the other companies deal with there grandstanding; if Ford goes 'look were the only domestic game in town now- you either lower your prices or we'll build our own damned plants' they could call them and hope its a bluff, or they could lower there prices.
Prices of cars go up in the short term, and there may be waiting lists, but it gets filled pretty quick.
Re:blah blah profit blah share price blah (Score:4, Insightful)
Has the company lost market share?
Slowly but certainly, yes it is losing market share - and badly.
Once you factor in the mobile devices, Apple is the largest personal computer maker going right now. Claim what you will otherwise, but if the iPad is so inconsequential, then why is Microsoft desperately trying to make one? Because they see that drop happening as well.
Is it profitable?
Is what profitable? Overall, yes Microsoft is still cashing in on their eroding OS/Office monopoly, but they have yet to realize significant profit on anything else. Even XBox, which many Microsofties gleefully point to, just barely began making any profit at all, and has not yet cleared ROI. Whether they manage to before next-gen shoves them back into the red is unclear.
Is there any major threat to the company in the future?
Hell yes there is. The whole mobile computing thing for starters. The fact that the enterprise at large has turned their noses up at automatically upgrading with every new version is another significant threat to income. The continually sliding loss in market share for both the browsers and smartphones are other major threats.
I mentioned the web because if folks get cozy with the idea of using non-IE browsers, and with using web-based email (hint: half the population already is), then it's not much of a stretch to sell them something cheaper (Android tablets) or of better reputation (iOS/Macs) in which to do that. Where does that leave Microsoft in the consumer space?
Re:Worse? (Score:0, Insightful)
So under no circumstances should GM or Chrysler ever be permitted to fail? If so, do you advocate that the government now forcibly break them up into smaller companies which can be individually allowed to cease operations if they are unprofitable?
Re:Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are looking for the worst managed company, Kodak must surely get a mention. They are being driven out of business by a new technology, digital cameras, that they actually invented.
Ballmer ignored competitive intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a largely-held perception that Apple's success is due to slick advertising. Where Apple has excelled is in product management as a function of marketing. They have powerfully identified the feature set and price points people will pay for their products. They have accurately forecast demand so that they can leverage volume purchasing of components to keep the price at those acceptable points while building in a healthy profit margin. They are firing on all cylinders, and even a few cylinders nobody thought existed.
Meanwhile, Ballmer has ignored the trends and innovations of other companies until success in the marketplace forces him to mount a too-late response (Zune, Windows Store, Windows Phone 7, et. al.). Consider this 2007 interview where Ballmer mocked the iPhone's prospects [engadget.com]. For him to do that means that he was ignoring competitive intelligence studies that he should have been taking seriously. Even then, his marketing department should have been focus-grouping on the iPhone to determine what the demand was and projecting out where it could go. Had he read what the competitive intelligence studies would have told him, his response would have been to acknowledge the vacuum in existing smartphone technology and hint about forthcoming Microsoft innovations to come in that space.
In years to come, the wikipedia definition for the word "hubris" will contain a link to that video clip.
Seth
That's ONE possible scenario .... (Score:5, Insightful)
But I'd argue that I believe it's not really accurate. It sounds like exactly what the pro-bailout folks want you to believe....
For starters, when you speak of Ford as the "uninvolved party" and the good guy? That's not quite reality. Ford's CEO petitioned Congress in 2008 to authorize a credit line of up to $9 billion for Ford in case the economy got worse and the company needed it. Ford also received $5.9 billion in government loans in 2009 to retool its manufacturing plants to produce more fuel-efficient cars, and the company lobbied for and benefited from the cash-for-clunkers program. Ford was also entwined in the situation because almost 25 percent of Ford’s top dealers also owned GM and Chrysler franchises.
All of the "Big 3" were to blame for mismanagement and a "we're too big to fail" attitude. Ford was just lucky to be in a little bit better place, financially, at the time everything really came apart at the seams.
Meanwhile? We're in a situation today where an "American car" is often American in name-plate only. "Foreign cars" are often assembled 100% right here in the U.S.A. as well. Hyundai's plant in Alabama is one of the only non-union auto plants in the nation, and is doing incredibly well. They hire a lot of people who only had low-paying jobs in the restaurant industry and the like, before starting there. They receive training for an actual career job and pay that's at least 80% or so of what their unionized counterparts receive ... and Hyundai claims they get employees with more positive attitudes and more willingness to do the job well. Sounds like win-win to me.
Meanwhile, what has GM done with those bailout funds lately? I see Cadillac is going to build their new hybrid electric vehicle and their flagship XTS over in new assembly plants in China. Is that what you were hoping those tax dollars would be spent on?
Re:Hilarious and predictable (Score:5, Insightful)
They are still a bad actor.